MANAGEMENT OF GROUSE MOORS 
The main drain should never run straight down the hill, but be taken 
slantwise, with the cross-drains running into it in herring-bone fashion. 
Such shallow drains are of great use in running off the surface water, 
while they do not deplete the moss of too much of the supply it should 
conserve for a droughty period. Favourite places for snipe should be 
carefully left untouched. Snipe only frequent certain spots, and there are 
always plenty of places where no snipe ever go which can be drained 
without having recourse to the others. The presence of snipe on a moor 
adds much to the attraction, for they make a welcome variety in the bag. 
Heather burning . — One of the most important items in the management of 
a moor is the burning of the heather, and this is not the easy matter to de- 
cide upon which many persons appear to think. What may suit the needs 
of one locality may be most unsuitable, even prejudicial, in another. Where 
limestone is present, especially at high altitudes, heather requires much 
coaxing to get it to grow at all when sheep are grazed there, and if there 
should be too large a stock of sheep the heather will soon disappear 
altogether. To burn in such a locality, and there are hundreds of thousands 
of acres of such grouse -ground, would be very foolish, for the sheep would 
consume the young shoots of the heather as it tried to struggle through 
the grass, and kill it entirely. But where the soil is peat, sand, or gravel, 
burning can be carried out with impunity, there being no fear of the grass 
smothering the heather. The late Mr W. Prior was keeper on a moor 
adjoining that on which the writer has lived for many years, and he 
used to point out a batch of heather which he knew for a fact was 
eighty years old, and yet was only about eight or ten inches high, 
green and flourishing, and on which the grouse fed as freely as on any 
other. If a match were applied to this heather it would never come up 
again, owing to the attentions of the sheep, and the writer could show 
numbers of places similar in every way, where burning would be equally 
prejudicial. About 2,000 feet above the sea-level there is heather from 
two or three inches in height to six inches, that has never been burned 
in the memory of man, and if such ground were burned it would take a 
lifetime to replace. 
How important it is to burn heather when feasible is clearly shown 
by the Report of the Grouse Committee, for the beneficent action of the 
fire destroys in its course the eggs and larvae of the deadly parasites which 
attack the grouse. Since the crowding together of large numbers of birds 
— either through stress of weather, or from being attracted to favourite 
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